The study of leadership is ancient, as old as Greek philosophy and the earliest Hindu, Daoist, and Confucian scriptures. In contrast, the study of management is new, beginning shortly after the advent of the industrial revolution. But ever since, the study of management has proliferated like wildfire, eclipsing the study of leadership by orders of magnitude in frequency and reach. Naturally this raises the question as to whether the subjects are substantively different rather than different words for the same thing.

Theory I: Leadership and Management Differ Significantly

In general, leadership scholars and leadership development consultants hold that leadership and management are altogether different functions. Indeed, some in this camp go so far as to assert that the respective roles are best filled by completely different kinds of people. In an oft-cited Harvard Business Review article, Zaleznik asserted that “managers enforce process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly.” Leaders, in contrast, seem to “tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand issues more fully.”¹

According to this schema, leaders are visionary, holistic, and even artistic in contrast to more analytical, conservative, and risk-avoidant managers. Leaders are also individualistic, tending to go their own way, whereas managers seek safety in groups, consensus, and fitting in. Zaleznik sees an overwhelming predominance of the managerial types, those generally attracted to business management studies, as the main reason for the inherent conservatism of American business culture, one typically mired in bureaucracy and resistant to real innovation and change.² When it comes to management versus leadership, the left-brain/right-brain paradigm seems very much in play.

The transformational leadership camp also postulates a stark disparity between management and leadership. Bennis and Nanus blame the proliferation of MBA programs that turn out cookie-cutter managers for the inertia that characterize so many organizations. They too decry MBA education with its mechanistic, pseudo-rational “theories” of management that lead to knee-jerk responses in the workplace as well as organizations that are over-managed and under-led.³ They say these graduates excel at handling the daily routine, but never question whether the routine is worth doing, a byproduct of the MBA focus on “how-tos” and “nuts-and-bolts” (task orientation) without the vision-oriented perspective needed to act with a sense of purpose, principle, and meaning.⁴ Their famous adage that “managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right things” captures the Theory I sentiment to a T.

Theory II: Management and Leadership Differ but Overlap

Holding that leadership and management are different is not to say that both aren’t vital or that they’re mutually exclusive. Kotter frames the respective functions in terms that are functionally similar to those of Theory I proponents, however, he does not spurn MBA education per se.

His extensive research of some 60 leaders of U.S. corporations does not conclude that leaders and managers must be different people. It’s certainly true from his research that some people seem to make better leaders, while others make better managers. But there also are rare individuals who are good at both. Indeed it is Kotter’s view that precisely such individuals make the most capable leaders. In his observations of these top-tier leaders, they seem to switch hats all the time, sometimes leading, sometimes managing, sometimes both at once.⁶

Similarly in a survey of dozens of leadership theories including Servant Leadership, Authentic Leadership, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory, and Transformational Leadership, Northouse concludes that leadership and management substantially overlap.⁷ All of these models comprise some elements that suggest managerial functions and others more indicative of leadership.

Theory III: Leadership and Management Are Similar

The top 20 post-graduate business and management schools in the U.S.⁸ all offer PhD and MS degree concentrations in management. None, however, offer any such focus in leadership per se. In their respective MBA programs, about half offer a leadership course as part of the core curriculum. Three of the 20 offer the choice of an elective concentration in leadership (Wharton, Fuqua, and Stern).

The most common “leadership” course titles are telling. Teambuilding for Leaders, Negotiation for Leaders, and Communication for Leaders are mainstays. The process of leadership development isn’t studied as such, but rather subsets of skills and behaviors deemed useful for potential leaders, which would certainly be as useful to managers or group facilitators.

It is also crystal clear from the communications of these leading U.S. business schools that they do not consider leadership to be a function separate from management. The words “leader” and “leadership” are ubiquitous in their promotional brochures and websites. Throughout them it’s implicit that it is in the learning of the management foundations such as business analytics, accounting, finance, microeconomics, and supply chain logistics that leaders are forged. In other words, what any good business leader most requires is management knowledge and skill. These assertions beg the question.  But they also underscore that leadership and management are constructs, and therefore subject to semantics.

Truth told, most masters degree programs in leadership reside in the organization development section of tier-II business schools, where they are sometimes glossed “Organizational Leadership.” The focus in these programs is on human resource development, organizational communication, and learning and development. Although these are the very subject areas MBAs have been known to deride as soft, impractical, and touchy-feely, they are in fact management rather than leadership functions in the view of Theories I and II.

The One Certainty: Leadership Is Hard to Teach

Not one book in 50 on leadership fails to conclude that good managers are common, whereas good leaders rare. If this is true, it’s fair to ask how come.

No one doubts that management can be taught. It is being taught—at every college and university it would seem. Its techniques are cognitive, quantitative, deductive—and well understood. It’s the very stuff of textbooks.

Leadership, on the other hand, is qualitative, inductive, and intuitive. And since it involves the use of power in service of a vision, it inevitably raises questions of values, ethics, and character.⁹ It is fair to ask whether these attributes could be altered in any significant way in the course of a two-year masters degree program. Leadership would seem to require a broader course of study and training than management, as it ranges across a variety of behavioral and social science disciplines.

Perhaps leadership doesn’t wholly belong in business schools or management courses. After all, military service academies and officer candidate schools all require more core coursework and training in leadership than MBA programs. Schools of Education and of Divinity and Theology place about as much emphasis on leadership as do the elite business schools. Interestingly, while political science has certainly been known to study leaders, in the schools that turn out most U.S. political leaders—law schools—leadership studies are scant.

It’s enough to make one wonder whether leadership can be taught in a systematic, scholarly way at all. That’s a BIG question. Clearly some of the most critical traits and behaviors of effective leaders stem from heredity or early life experiences (e.g., intelligence, drive and initiative, mental and emotional health, integrity).¹⁰ So let us agree for now that management and leadership are both needed in organizations, though the latter is more rare.¹¹ And that the Japanese proverb that “vision without action is a dream, and action without vision a nightmare” will still hit the nail on the head.

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1. Zaleznik, A. (1977/2004). Managers and Leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, 55.
2. Ibid, pp. 67-78.
3. Bennis, W. & Nanus, B. (2003). Leaders: Strategies for taking charge. New York: Collins Business Essentials, pp. 19-20.
4. Ibid.
5. Adapted from Kotter, J. P. (1990). A force for change: How leadership differs from management. New York: The Free Press.
6. Kotter, p. 104.
7. Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice, 8th Ed. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, p.
8. U.S. News and World Report 2022 business school rankings, downloaded from https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools, 20 April 2023.
9. Burns, J. M. (1978) Leadership. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 29-40.
10. Kotter, pp. 105-108.
11. Northouse, pp. 12-16.